


Forget Me Not

by father (joursdenfantsmorts)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, M/M, Military Homophobia, i had no idea military homophobia was a tag, the ending is sad sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-16 01:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15426282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joursdenfantsmorts/pseuds/father
Summary: Natasha smiles sadly. “We have a saying, in Russia: trust, but verify. The only sort of trust that survives in espionage. Clint and Phil forgot long enough to fall in love."Coulson asks Clint to have faith for the first time in the thin air of the Transcaucasian mountains.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Aka a "five times Clint trusted Coulson and one time he didn't" fic, but metastasised. This is a bit more like the earlier Hannibal stuff I’ve written than the other gratuitous C/C stuff. I think given the space to brood I have a tendency towards ostentatious, absolutist symbolics
> 
> This Clint is coming to SHIELD as a willing recruit after a tour with the Marines and a few years on the lam with Nat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to visit places no tourist in their right mind would willingly consider, and in 2016, while we were in Transnistria, my weird-places travel buddy brought up Nagorno-Karabakh. I ended up doing a lot of reading on the area and blocked out the setting for this chapter at that time without really knowing what I was going to use it for.

**Seven years ago, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic**

Coulson asks Clint to trust him for the first time in the thin air of the Transcaucasian mountains. 

It’s noontime in the South Caucasus, at the tail end of July. He sits with Coulson in a cramped belltower sniper's nest, scoping out the area for a clandestine meeting that will take place next week. They’ve barely exchanged a couple of words since arriving, and Clint will happily take that over all of the disastrous ways his other handlers have immediately repudiated him.

Clint would never have even known this place existed– that there was a war going on here– if he and Coulson hadn't been deployed as part of the security detail for a Russian attaché. His dossier says that the impending talks are the first steps of a Russian-brokered ceasefire, backed publicly by the OSCE and quietly by SHIELD. The situation on the ground had been bad enough that the only route in had been by way of Armenian public thoroughfares, and their four-hour journey into the mountains from Tatev had drawn far too much attention for Clint’s comfort. 

Clint looks out over the courtyard before him with a scope, lying on his belly with his elbows supporting his torso. For all that SHIELD uses him as a sniper, he hasn’t seen hide or hair of an assigned spotter on any of his ops, so he does his own prep work now. Summer in the region surrounding the Artsakh capital is mild, wind low, humidity middling, conditions good for long-range shooting. There shouldn’t be a need for it, as natural rock formations limit the meeting spot to sightlines of five hundred meters or less, but Clint prepares regardless. Observations about the geography and geometry of the outpost are pencilled neatly in the ledgers of his battered Five Star notebook. Set-ups for slant range calculations are scribbled in the margins, to be crunched when Clint’s laptop is charged again. 

Coulson, funny man, is next to him with a scope of his own, graphite scratching as he writes all over a packet of what looks like classified documents. 

Clint wonders if Coulson’s sweating in his monkey suit. He’s seen the man in combat-appropriate gear all of two times, and never when it makes sense to be kitted out; he has a bit of a reputation as a hardass, and he doesn't do much to dispel it. This is their first time out in the field together, the first week of their surprise partnership. Clint thinks either Coulson’s being punished by having Clint foisted on him, or Clint’s getting shafted with one last handler from hell before the company boots him. 

He’s about to move to look over the windward vista when Coulson reaches blithely under Clint’s arm to nab a runaway pencil. Clint tenses automatically, unable to keep his body from reacting.

It hisses at him. _threatthreatthreatthreat._

Ten heartbeats pass to more graphite scratching, and Coulson casually breaks their hour-long silence. "Any suggestions for the operation order?” 

Clint glances at the man, but he's flipping between the pages of his dossier like he’s referencing something. What he’s double-checking, Clint can’t say. 

More importantly, Clint has no idea why he’s being asked about patrol assignments. Earlier on when he first joined up, his thrice-damned handlers had made it clear that operations command would not be his purview. Apparently he had been picked for his sharpshooting alone. What a farce. 

One of the most basic lessons Clint had learned from his stint in the Marines was that, situation willing, tactical input from each member of the team was vital. His unit leaders there, from Basic all the way to SOC, had had to be broken in first. Trust had come slowly. In SHIELD, though, it hasn’t come at all. He’s already run out of fingers to count the moronic accusations of insubordination in his file. So he hesitates to answer. Thinks about it.

Before, during the briefing, he had considered voicing some rearrangements– minor switches, nothing critical. The only swap he would have stressed would have been Christophson for Liu– to move their newbie backup medic into the building patrol and the ex-Army grunt into the perimeter guard. For something as straightforward as a protection detail, though, Clint wasn’t going to kick up a fuss. Not on his training leash with Coulson. He might have made a face, but he’d kept his mouth shut. Historically, his handlers had a tendency to implode when he opened it.

He doesn’t see why Coulson should be any different. So far he’s lacked the conceit of Brock Rumlow, the envy of Victoria Hand; Clint wonders what sin the Army man will have. Of course, he doesn’t know for sure, but it hadn’t escaped Clint’s notice that the unit SOP Coulson had laid out seemed like it had come straight from the Army Ranger Handbook. Admittedly, the SHIELD Agent Handbook had a lot of suspicious parallels, but the number of civilian recruits in SHIELD necessitated a different approach to operations. 

Clint thinks he might have a handler who’s former 75th. It’s entirely possible he might actually know what he’s doing, instead of taking after the other ranking agents’ petty vanities.

But there’s no point in risking it. 

"No sir," he finally responds, eyes flicking cautiously over Coulson’s face to see if he’s given the right answer. "Looks good to me."

Coulson bobs his head contemplatively, lips pursed. His gaze is still shifting between the pages of his notes. “Mm. What do you think about moving Liu into the building patrol? And Christophson to perimeter?”

Clint bores into the side of Coulson's head with hard eyes. This is absolute _bullshit._ He wouldn’t have made faces during briefing if he had known Coulson would be watching. 

”Is this a test, sir," he asks without inflection.

"No," Coulson replies steadily, finally looking up. His eyes are the same flat colour as the Transcaucasian sky. ”But we both know you have terrific tactical intuitions. Curiously, they’ve become less frequent the longer you’ve been with SHIELD.”

Clint’s ears burn and he clenches his teeth. His eyes skitter away from Coulson’s gaze and land below. He realises belatedly that the papers scattered in front of Coulson are Clint’s old handler reports.

 _Absolute. Bullshit._ Trust him to make the wrong call when it really counts.

“I’ll save you the harangue about operations readiness and feedback, because I put those two where they are to give them field experience for their quals. I just want you to know that I'll always be open to alterations to the plan as the mission allows, and communicative about my vetos.” Coulson wipes a bead of sweat from the bridge of his nose in the ensuing silence, and Clint almost startles to see evidence of the demands of Coulson’s flesh. 

Clint knows the man is waiting for a response, but there’s no protocol that requires one from him. He lets his silence speak. Coulson’s actions will decide his judgement, not his promises. At least the man hadn’t weakened the operations order to make a point with Clint– that wouldn’t have spoken very well of him at all. 

Coulson gathers his reports and pushes himself to his feet, the subtle shift of mass underneath his suit betraying nothing about how little he’s slept in the past few days in order to oversee preparations. Clint wakes briefly when he hears Coulson’s door shut at ass o’clock every morning and watches him stumble into his room from the showers every night at eleven. For all that it’s reckless, his results are meticulous and irrefutable. Tracking the earmarked papers in Coulson’s grip, he thinks he sees where the man’s reputation for competence comes from, how he inspires gushing loyalty in the offices. 

Finally, Coulson gives in to Clint’s reticence. “I know I’m operations lead here, but I’m also your handler,” he says. Clint fights the urge to roll his eyes. He doesn’t need a reminder. “Your first few shot you down, early on, and you learned not to say anything. That was foolish of them. Our working relationship will be my number-one priority.” Coulson pauses at the exit, his face serious. “I hope I can match your standards of performance.”

Clint wants to cuss him out for this ingratiating bull. “Yessir,” he salutes. Coulson nods and steps out.

Clint never thought he’d say he missed the take-it-for-granted structure of the military, but hell! He misses it. He’d give his left testicle for someone to take just his file at face value, tell him what his job is, and let him do the damn thing.

Next time, Clint thinks. Next time, he’ll give Coulson all the feedback he wants. 

Coulson might even listen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acronyms etc:  
> OSCE: Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe  
> Nagorno-Karabakh: a frozen conflict zone I have yet to visit in person  
> OPORD/operations order: mid-to-lower level subordinate unit briefing to coordinate the execution of a military operation  
> SOC: Special Operations Capable. Marine Corps designation for expeditionary units, including sniper teams  
> SOP: standard operating procedure. Based on standards of each military branch, varies by unit


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw Some homophobic comments/language in this chapter

**Seven years ago, Gomel Region, Belarus**

Clint stops to piss into his last ziplock bag, one hundred meters into his stalk. He’s roughly four hundred and ten meters from target, the compound entrance barely visible through the scrub. He supposes SHIELD must be very happy to have a graduate of the Marines Sniper School on hand for when they can’t call in the local military to fumble through powder-keg conflicts. The only issue is that nobody else on the team has qualified as a spotter– again– and Clint would rather watch his own back than risk taking a boot along to fuck it all up. 

Coulson had looked at him long and hard when Clint rejected their last observer candidate, but said nothing. A standard Army sniper loadout had been waiting for him on his bunk when he got back to his quarters, with a blank requisitions form clipped onto the frame of the ALICE pack. He had to hand it to Coulson– the man was efficient, and he _listened_. The only thing he scrawled onto the form before handing it off at the command tent was ‘dry socks 4 more pairs’; Coulson’s default expression had morphed into a brilliant grin. Clint left to pack everything with a warm feeling in his chest. 

It’s been one hour of hiking through forest, half an hour of completing a prepped ghillie suit, and four hours of sliding and crawling along the rocky hillside inch by painful inch, feeding himself little bits of dried meat and fruit with excruciatingly slow movements as the soldiers in the watchtower upwind swivel their gazes across the landscape. Roving perimeter guards below pass by every five minutes. There’s basic scrub cover rising up to three feet in height, and the broken rocks of the killzone extending for a mile in front of the compound are an eye-watering miasma of white and black specks, which works brilliantly to camouflage his figure. 

At 12pm, Clint extends the directional antenna on his wrist-comm and thumbs the transmitter toggle to activate the microphone. “Base this is Charlie-One checking in.” At least SHIELD tech means he doesn’t need to lug a military-issue single channel radio system into the field with him. His watch tells him there are two hours to contact. SHIELD standard operating procedure dictates another required transmission in an hour and a half to keep his extraction plan on-track. 

It takes Clint thirty more minutes to scoot behind the profile of a mid-sized boulder, just large enough to obscure his prone body. He waits for the perimeter guards to turn the corner before tugging scrub-decorated netting over his head and part of the boulder, tucking the edges in around his ghillie suit to give the illusion of jagged stone edges and natural brush when the sunlight changes. He rubs dirt and grease around the outside of the muzzle of his rifle one last time and sets it up on his tripod over the rock. 

Preparations complete, he tugs out the mouthpiece of his Camelback and sips on it, slipping into a meditative trance as he waits. The demands of his body fade into the chirping of nearby birds. 

His alarm vibrates at 1:30pm. He checks in with Command again. 

When the gates of the compound open at 2pm, a flurry of activity in the guard towers telegraphing the arrival of the convoy behind the walls, Clint settles behind his scope. The first car moves out. Clint breathes in, finger resting off of the trigger. The first car passes from the sightline of his scope. Then the second. Then the third.

When the entire convoy is out and travelling safely along the mountain road, the guards visibly relax. The main gate closes.

Ten minutes. Twenty. Clint sees the personnel door open at the side of the main gate and a flash of an insignia. A pair of soldiers from the perimeter guard salutes when they come across the corporal. They chat briefly, then move on in their route. The officer steps out from the wall a bit. He takes out a cigarette, lights it. Leans back into a divot between two buttresses. The watchtower guards glance down at him, then back at the landscape. 

Clint fires. 

The crack of the rifle is deafening, the sound ringing in his head even with his ear protection, but with the guards’ distance, the angle, and the absorbing brush, the noise is mitigated. The officer collapses against the wall immediately, but he’s blocked from the sightlines of the watchtower by a support strut and the texture of the compound walls holds him upright. Cigarette smoke continues to rise behind the obstruction. The guards settle. 

Clint pockets the shell, hunkers down under the rock and packs up. He starts inching his way towards the tree line, covering his tracks with sweeps of shorn brush.

Fifteen minutes later, when the corporal has yet to reenter the structure, the guards realise there’s something wrong and the shouting begins; Clint takes the opportunity to shove himself over faster under the cover of a few large bushes. 

As he reaches the area where the ground begins to dip downwards, pine tree roots digging sideways into the ground like massive stanchions, frantic movement around the compound ramps up. Clint sees no less than five fireteams exit the compound gates, spreading out in bounding overwatch to canvass the killzone. Spotlights thump on as the sun droops to early evening. Clint inches lower and lower. When the fireteams are too close, he lies on the forest detritus and waits.

One member of the fireteam nearing the drop at the edge of the tree line almost steps on Clint, boot crunching through dried pine needles by Clint’s flank, but his stillness pays off in the encroaching darkness; they move past him. 

One hour passes. Clint resumes his descent. Once he’s past the hundred-meter mark, the hill becomes an overhang with outcroppings leading down to a creek. From there it’s seven clicks west to the extraction point. 

He drinks a litre of water from his pack but refrains from urinating. Recon didn’t mark any dogs in the compound but he won’t take any chances. 

When Clint arrives at the clearing, an unmarked helicopter is waiting for him. He waits behind the tree line until the agent sitting in the bay sticks his arm out, flashing the ‘situation normal’ extraction hand signal codes. Clint signs back his own confirmation code for ’no hostiles, flight plan unchanged’.

The agent clears his throat as Clint continues to stand behind the tree. “Good work, operative. Are you injured?” The words are jarring in the silence in Clint’s head. The settled peace of the hunt is gone.

He shakes his head harshly, trying to find equilibrium again. 

“Negative,” Clint replies, and doesn’t speak all the way back to camp. 

When the helo touches down, Coulson is nowhere to be seen. Clint thanks the pilot and his escort, shoulders his pack, and makes his way to the command tent to give his report. 

He isn’t quite sure what he’s expecting, but it certainly isn’t Coulson in a shouting match with Brock Rumlow. 

“You’ll trust _me_ to know my own operative, and I’ll trust _you_ to coordinate as necessary!” Coulson’s eyes are glittering with unspoken threats.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’ve barely known the kid for a month, and you cave the moment he pulls the lone wolf act. Don’t tell me that arrogant little prick _convinced_ you.” Rumlow’s face warps in a mocking sneer. “You find a new cockwarmer, Phil?”

Clint knows his stint with Rumlow as his handler wasn’t great, but he didn’t think it was bad enough to fuck with his professionalism. Clint steps fully into the tent at this point. “I don’t suck cock for anyone, Rumlow. You’re out of line.” 

Both men startle, Coulson’s face nearly incandescent when he turns towards Clint in surprise, but Rumlow laughs first. “Like I’d believe that. Or don’t you know your new handler’s a fag? I’ll bet you, if you want to keep your ‘operative freedom’”– he air-quotes with his fingers– “you’ll find yourself taking it up the ass soon enough.” 

Clint’s eyebrows might as well disappear in his hairline. He’s never seen dirty laundry aired quite like this before. 

“Well. As operations lead, I’ll expect your reports on my desk by Tuesday,” Rumlow chirps, brushing by Clint through the doorway. “See you two back at base.” He saunters out of the tent, clearly happy to have had the last word. 

Coulson grimaces at Clint in exhaustion. “Some days, I wish I just fucking opened a restaurant or something."

Rumlow knows some of Clint's buttons– unfortunately his semi-redacted file at SHIELD is accessible to his handlers– and had made a habit of prodding them in the past for sport, but still. He’s had enough people force him to pay unforgivable prices for the most basic of his needs. Even the possibility that there’s some veracity in the crap that spewed out of his mouth makes Clint wary.

Clint watches Coulson in silence. “Any of that true?”

Coulson abruptly smashes his fist onto the card table, his face contorted with fury. “ _Fuck_ no!” He visibly gathers himself. “I mean, yes, I’m attracted to men. But don’t you believe anything else that little fuckwit said. I would _never_ abuse my authority like that.” His seething energy, no longer contained in Rumlow’s presence, blasts out again in his voice like an electric storm, then vanishes as abruptly as before. Now his expression verges on awkward discomfort. “I hope my, you know, won’t be a problem, for, er.”

“It won’t,” Clint says. Coulson sags in transparent relief. “Can I ask what you were fighting about?” 

Coulson smiles crookedly. “Oh, right. Brock has control issues the size of Mount fucking Rushmore.” 

Clint snorts. Understatement. 

“He was furious at me for agreeing to let you handle yourself. I mean, I thought to myself, if we hired you for your skill in this _exact_ capacity, then of course we should trust you to know what you’re doing.” He spreads his hands in a gesture of feigned helplessness. “And besides, you passed it through the line of command. It’s not like you ditched your spotter somewhere in the middle of the woods.”

Clint would have, if they had forced one on him. 

“Sir,” he says. He takes care to enunciate. He wants Coulson to understand exactly what he’s saying. “It wouldn’t have happened this way with any other handler.”

Coulson frowns at him. Then a dazzling smile breaks out over his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boot: newbie, fresh out of basic  
> ALICE: All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment. Used to be standard issue in the US military, most infantry uses MOLLE now. Standard sniper team gear still employs ALICE packs because of noise issues with MOLLE pack velcro.  
> dry socks 4 more pairs: when you're rucking, you can never have enough dry socks.  
> military radio communication: generally sniper teams predetermine radio codes, a number of required transmissions, and SOP for missed required transmissions to keep their support up to date on whether or not their extraction should continue as planned etc  
> fireteam: the smallest armed unit of a military, usually 4ish people  
> bounding overwatch: system of movement for a fireteam when hostile contact is expected. aka the leapfrog coordination you see in movies when the soldiers need to move somewhere under fire


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a huge fan of this chapter, but here it is. I'll likely come back and edit huge swathes of it as i reread it and regret ever having posted it

**Four years ago, Köln, Germany**

Clint clatters down on the mess hall bench next to Coulson. Across the table sits Jasper Sitwell, the equivalent to what would be Coulson’s best friend, if Coulson had best friends. Over the last three years of their partnership, Clint has become privy to the senior agent’s single-minded dedication to his work. It feeds his reputation for exacting competence– and has landed him no less than two promotions in the intervening period– but it comes at the cost of fading friendships. Older connections, cohort acquaintances from his training days, ghost through his life in the form of surprise encounters in corridors around the world. As mission assignments are, agents hardly get any downtime in the same rotation, much less in the same base; it’s a minor miracle that Sitwell is bunked with them here in SHIELD’s German headquarters.

“Agent Sitwell.” Clint nods by way of greeting.

Sitwell’s eyes dance with laughter. “It’s good to see you too, Barton.”

“Still alive, still kicking.”

Coulson eyes Clint’s tray and claps him lightly on the shoulder. “Good choice, these German potatoes are fantastic. Anyways, Jasper,” he says, “why is it you’re here again? I thought you were working on operations in New York for the foreseeable future.”

“Yeah,” Sitwell snorts, “Same way you were working on ops in Geneva for the foreseeable future.”

Coulson rears up a bit. “She’s here?” Clint’s eyes immediately lock in on Coulson’s face. His expression is inscrutable. “I thought she was still on the East Coast.”

Sitwell shakes his head, leaning in to speak _sotto voce_. “Nah, sighted in Paris two days ago. Word out is she owes someone, big time. I’m headed to the airfield tonight with my team, see if I can catch up.”

“Who?” Clint cuts in. He has a sinking feeling about this.

“Sorry, Bartie, eyes-only. I trust you not to gossip but I can’t actually say anything outright. You know how it is.”

“If you’re not going to tell you might as well wait until I leave to start dropping shit,” Clint snipes. He’ll get it from Coulson later anyways, and Sitwell knows it.

“The only shit getting dropped here is the shit you’re losing, man,” Sitwell shoots back. They grin at each other.

Coulson’s eyes flick between them, his expression radiating mild concern. “When did you become friends?”

“Oh, you know,” Sitwell waves his hand vaguely, “what with that 0-8-4 last September. Barton was real helpful.”

Coulson squints in suspicion. “Ok,” he says. “I’m glad you get along.”

“Like a house on fire,” Sitwell leans back with a chuckle. “So. What are you two getting up to?”

“Couple of mob capos to cull,” Clint offers. “Pretty straightforward.”

 

—

 

Ten hours later, Clint curses himself for jinxing the operation.

“ _Nat_ ,” he hisses, hand smothering the microphone in his collar. “ _What the fuck are you doing here?_ ”

Standing at the antique wood bar in the mafia’s scheduled meeting chambers in downtown Graz, plastic explosives in either hand, Natalia Romanova looks distinctly unimpressed in her Lanvin pantsuit. “ _Ne tvoye delo,_ Clint.”

He’s not as surprised as he would have been without Sitwell’s timely slip. He is, unfortunately, still surprised. Clint’s jaw clenches involuntarily. “ _Ne moye delo?_ It’s totally my fucking _delo_ , there’s no way SHIELD will miss you when the rest of the team moves in." He sets the case in his hand down next to a couch and begins to take out SHIELD-issue surveillance devices for the room. "Tell me your exfil?”

“Guns blazing, out the window into the Rhine.”

Clint looks closer at the barely-concealed bags under her eyes, the limp energy he missed over the surprise of seeing her again for the first time in three years. The rushing glide of her accent stirs up old fondness in his chest, but her flippancy encourages stirrings of guilt. “ _Tasha_ , what’s going on? Who’s holding the thumbscrew?”

“I owe Michael Schwarzmann five heads, but he and his friends are making it hard to collect.” She examines a nail. “And you? What are you doing here?"

Clint shakes his head and gestures towards his case. “I’m here to secure the premises,” he jokes. “SHIELD is liquidating three of the German division heads to force a coup. What’s Schwarzmann playing at? Better yet, why did you take a contract with that lunatic?”

Natasha's face morphs between irritation and indignation. “Give me a little more credit. His father passed down the favour along with the drug empire. There’s not enough money in the world to persuade me to work of my own free will with someone clumsy enough to try to upend the _grand jeu_ like _this_.”

From the translucence of her skin, wan with stress, Clint can see there’s more. “And?”

“And, he’s selling options for a contract on my head, to go live the minute I settle my debt. The little asshole is playing on fears that I am too dangerous to remain free for hire. Already everyone is looking to dispose of me first and to leave the mafiosi.” Her eyes blaze in the corona of the overhead lights. “Otherwise I would just kill him to cancel the hit.”

In the moment, if he ignores the exhausted weakness in Natasha's shoulders, it almost feels like they're together again, complaining at each other while carving a bloody path through the European underworld. Like SHIELD had never found him in his shitty little apartment in Brooklyn, convinced that he'd been living off his savings and wasting his talent on occasional gigs as a personal trainer, and offered him a contract on the spot. Clint supposes he never really got closure. Nat would call it leaving loose ends– sloppy, in their line of work.

Clint sits at the bar, dropping a handful of bugs on the counter and reaching his free hand out to squeeze Nat’s. “You’d think daddy might have left an advisor to go with the empire. Why haven’t you gone to anyone? He’s trying to break the peace. None of the old guard will refuse audience.”

“I have an image to maintain, _ptichka_. I owe the debt. And they might not refuse audience, but right now every family in Central Europe would like my head on a pike.”

Clint watches as Natasha injects sedatives into every single bottle in the bar cabinet. He hands her a listening device, which she attaches under the counter.

“Hey, Nat,” he says slowly, palming the remaining bugs. “Let me help. _Tvoi dolgi– moi dolgi_. Like the old times, yeah?” He is happy at SHIELD, but his one old loyalty is stronger.

Natasha sighs. “What would you have me do?”

“Come with me. We’ll take care of this, together. It’s been too long since someone’s been around to watch your back.” Three years, in fact. “Let the suits do the dirty work. My team is meant to secure three of the attendees anyways; we’re manipulating a couple of loose cannons. Nobody will notice me adding a few more to the count. Then we can deal with Schwarzmann, balance the books.” He takes a deep breath then, hoping his next words are the truth. “SHIELD would protect you afterwards.”

They watch each other in contemplative silence. Natasha pours herself a drink from the last untouched bottle, before drugging it as well. She knows as well as he does that his promise is less a promise than a gamble. There is plenty about the Black Widow that is objectionable– and unlike Clint, her sins are all on record.

_–_ _Clint? I hear voices. Are you in the way of your microphone?_ _–_

The sound of his handler’s tenor in his ear nearly makes him jump in fright. _Shit!_ Clint doesn’t do urban recon much, because he’s dismal at dissemblance and face-to-face deceptions; Coulson knows that he usually avoids contact if possible.

He takes his hand off of his collar and murmurs into the comm line. “Situation normal, sir, just people outside in the hallway.” He raises his eyebrows at Natasha and covers the comm again, holding his collar out a little so it doesn’t pick up the vibrations of his throat. “ _Raskazhi mne_ , Nat. I gotta finish up here.”

Her lips twist in a moue. “What will your handler think?” She doesn’t bother to ask if Clint will go with her, if SHIELD does not take her.

Clint squares his shoulders. “He trusts me.”

Natasha sees the belief ringing in his eyes– and the doubt. But she’s in no position to refuse. “On your head be it.”

Clint activates the listening devices after the door shuts in her wake.

 

—

 

In the end, their hulking disaster of a plan takes two months to conclude. Two months of running, two months of dusting Ronin off from the back shelf– in practice, if not in name– and letting him breathe in the cold air of the German winter, two months of quiet fear that Coulson will refuse to take him back again.

Clint sees the Austrian operation through and vanishes immediately, to Coulson’s frantic comm hails. He leaves his handler with nothing more than a simple _–_ _Trust me, sir, please?_ _–_ to reassure him that Clint will try his best to come back. SHIELD deduces outside involvement when the rest of the mob’s division leaders don’t make it out of the room alive, and Clint knows that the pressure on Coulson to produce Clint’s report– and Clint– in order to determine the level of his operative’s involvement, to determine the degree to which Clint has flouted protocol, betrayed SHIELD, will force Coulson to bring to bear every iota of his formidable ability to make shit up on the fly.

When word gets out that the Black Widow has affiliated with SHIELD, any remaining desires to put a bounty on her head should be tempered by the fear of institutional retribution and the certainty that a double-edged sword has been removed from the playing field.

If SHIELD decides to take her, that is.

Coulson’s face when Clint and Nat surrender themselves in his apartment in New York is heartbreakingly open, relief and anger and fear warring for dominance in the creases of his face, with a hard gleam of hope shining in his tight smile. It’s the face of a man who has risked his career for Clint without a sliver of evidence, left hanging without anything as courteous as a by-your-leave. Trust, so much trust; Clint almost can’t stand to look him in the eyes.

The part of him that loves his handler grieves. For a man who can’t afford to show weakness, Coulson has all but advertised his hand.

When the time comes to make his choice, Clint goes home. He could run with Nat, retire, and preclude blacklisting and prison for the rest of his operational shelf-life– or, he could sit tight and wait for Coulson to make it all better, and keep the life he’s made as Clint Barton.

If this is some cosmic joke, a culmination of the stupid trust he’s put in so many people before him, Clint will eat his fucking trigger finger. But he remembers Coulson, stern and kind-faced, asking for a chance.

Clint hopes Coulson meets Clint’s standards of performance. At least, the standards he’s asking for now. It might take a miracle, and that’s as unfair as it gets, but this is it– this is Coulson’s chance. Clint can’t go back after this.

His body, tense as it is in the cell’s single bolted chair, is silent.

The night passes without event, and in the morning, Director Fury is standing in front of his cell. Clint gets out of bed and salutes. He’s never met the Director in person, but he recognises him because there’s only one person this towering black man in a leather trench coat could be. The eye patch is a big clue.

The man turns his one gimlet eye on Clint. Clint stares back. It’s not the worst he’s ever had to face, and it’s easier to focus on than two eyes.

“Clint Francis Barton.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

Fury makes a disgusted face. “Sit the fuck down, soldier, you’re not in the Corps anymore. That shit’s gonna get me shot someday.”

Clint’s lips flatten. He barely holds a retort in and stands in parade rest, gaze steady over Fury’s left shoulder.

Fury tilts his head. “What was that, Barton? You want to say it louder?”

Clint stares rigidly into the wall. He can’t believe the Director is trying to pick a fight. The man could probably give his drill sergeant a run for his money at dramatics. “All due respect, sir. I’m done waiting for the verdict. How much time am I looking at?” There’s no guarantee that jail time is the least he’s getting, but there’s something to be said for testing the waters.

Fury sighs, the leather of his coat creaking as his chest deflates. “You’re not looking at any time. Coulson really pulled out all the plugs for you. You must be something special, alright.” He glares at Clint again. “And fucking stand easy, you’re gonna give me a hernia just looking at you.”

Clint can’t believe his ears. He relaxes his posture largely out of shock.

“Effective immediately, the Black Widow is under Coulson’s supervision. You two are grounded while she goes through her quals and whatever deprogramming she might need. When you’re all operational, you will respond as a team to callsign Delta.” Fury's eyes narrow. “Congratulations, Barton, on landing yourself one of the world’s most notorious assassins as a bathroom buddy. Jasper Sitwell is livid.”

“Y, yes sir,” Clint stammers. “I imagine he would be, sir.” It’s the easiest thing to process out of everything coming from Fury’s mouth.

“Mhm.” Fury unlocks his cell door and stands on the threshold. “I got a deal to make with you though, off the books. Between you and me only.”

“Sir?”

“SHIELD trusts Coulson, and Coulson trusts you.” Fury leans in. “Fuck this up? Count on me to make your life a living hell. Don’t think you can take it? There’s no shame in asking to be reassigned. I’ll take care of it personally.” With that, Fury stalks out of the hallway.

Clint collects his things from the supervisor and finds his way back to his quarters to sleep some more. He’ll check in with Nat in the afternoon. As he drifts off, his body thrums with the knowledge that he’s made the right choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: the russian transliterations 
> 
> _ne moye/tvoye delo_ : Not my/your business  
>  _Tasha_ : one of the various affectionate forms of Natalia  
>  _ptichka_ : diminutive form of 'bird, 'little bird'  
>  _tvoi dolgi– moi dolgi_ : Your debts are my debts  
>  _Raskazhi mne_ : tell me


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> will be back to edit

**Four years ago, Manhattan, New York**

“I do, you know,” Clint says into his glass. After all they’ve been through– all that Coulson has done for Clint– he is honour-bound to make it clear. “I trust you.”

Despite his refusal to address Coulson by name, despite his ungratefulness. He trusts Coulson, or at least he tries.

Coulson’s eyes are bright in the dim light of the bar. “I know. Thank you, Clint.” He takes a long drink from his pint. “Just promise me that if you ever do something like that again, you tell me the details first.”

Clint grimaces. “Yessir.”

Coulson swirls the drink in his hand, eyes fixed on the peeling formica of the bar. “Clint,” he says, suddenly hesitant. 

Clint’s body tenses. The susurrus of a warning builds up under his skin. 

“Clint, I…” Coulson makes eye contact with Clint, looking more nervous now than he did in their disaster of a hostage situation outside of Tashkent last year. He leans in with his shoulders until Clint can feel the blazing heat of his body in the sensitive skin of his face and neck, and lowers his voice to a whisper: “ _Ronin_?” 

_Like ripping off a band-aid_ , Clint tells himself. He’s made his choice; there’s no going back. “Yessir.” 

A blister of expressions roils across Coulson’s face before it lays studiously flat, and Clint can see the internal battle that Coulson is having with himself. He can sympathise– it’s difficult to reconcile the reality of not knowing someone the way you thought you did. To understand that to combine the person you know and the one you don’t is to find a completely different whole– to lose the gentle familiarity of the former, with no guarantees for a brighter future. The word for the feeling is ‘betrayal’. 

Clint wonders if this will be the truth that breaks Coulson’s back. The distance between them is suddenly unbearable. 

Coulson murmurs, his voice so low that even with his hearing aids Clint has to lean towards him reciprocally, heart beating faster, to comprehend. “I can’t promise that someone else won’t make the connection,” he says, very seriously, “but I won’t say anything. Is that what you want, Clint?”

Clint barks out a laugh in his hysteria, and grasps at the back of Coulson’s neck when Coulson rears back in surprise. _Oh ye of so little faith_. The frisson that skates across Clint’s skin at the feeling of the flexing muscles and light hairs of Coulson’s nape is electric. This must be how the little gods feel, in fens and lakes where only the withered locals worship with the loyalty of the institutionalised. “Yes, sir, thank you sir.”

The intimacy of the moment beats the memory into Clint’s skull. He sees every shift of Coulson’s face as the worry breaks into undisguised relief, a glimmer of the unrestrained passion Clint started to see three years ago in Belarus. “Would you tell me, though?” Coulson whispers harshly over the clattering of the bar. “I know I shouldn’t ask. But all those years ago, when we picked you up in Brooklyn. Was that a lie?” 

“Not a lie,” Clint passes back. “You guys got lucky. I was getting some R&R.” 

Coulson hums, gaze distant. “A secret for a secret,” he offers, his hand coming up to hang on Clint’s forearm. His palm is blazingly hot. “I picked you, you know. Me and Fury. We chose you based on your military record.” An eyes-only military record with virtually everything redacted, he doesn’t say. He watches Clint’s face carefully. 

Clint’s first thought is unkind– did Coulson work so hard to keep Clint because he was a pet project? To defend his pride and reputation? But he knows immediately that the accusation is uncharitable. The man has already risked so much, and asked for so little. 

If this is the time for confessions, though– Clint asks another question instead. “Why the hell did you leave me with all of those shit handlers?” 

Coulson chortles, and Clint feels some of the tension leave Coulson’s neck where the warm skin touches his palm and fingers. He knows the contact is beyond the point of appropriateness but he can’t make himself let go. “I was only level four then,” he begs off. “You went to the next available handler in the circuit. I had no dibs to call.” He squints at Clint, and Clint gets the feeling that he has unwittingly agreed to divulging more secrets. 

“About the other me,” Clint says, heading off the question he can see on Coulson’s tongue. “I’ll put together what’s important for you, but no more than that.” It’s a hard line, the sort that Coulson likes to toe. It asks for more trust. 

Coulson bobs his head in agreement, to Clint’s amazement, and draws him into a hug, every movement telegraphed clearly. The hand Clint has on Coulson’s neck slides to his shoulder and Clint revels in the sensation of a solid figure compressing into his chest. It feels shockingly good to be held, to come into contact with a warm body that he is not trying to restrain or rip into pieces. There is no imperative to survive. Time seems to swirl and drag at the air like molasses, the pressure of Coulson’s limbs the only things anchoring Clint to the barstool.

“Clint,” Coulson murmurs softly after a while, his mouth startlingly close to Clint’s ear. Clint holds back a shiver at the wet warmth of his breath. “Clint, it’s ok.” His hands are stroking firmly down Clint’s back.

Clint realises abruptly that he has a death grip on Coulson’s ribs where his arms are wrapped around him. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbles into Coulson’s neck. He tries to move back and– to his surprise– his body doesn’t obey him. “Um, I,” he mutters stiffly, chewing on the side of his cheek in embarrassment. “I can’t let go. I, my arms, they won’t…” 

“It’s ok,” Coulson repeats soothingly. “Go slowly, finger by finger. It’s ok.” 

Eventually Clint extracts himself, eyes sweeping furiously over the rest of the bar in the hopes that his humiliation has gone unnoticed. His muscles feel rigid from being locked into place, and his face burns. When he looks back at Coulson, he’s relieved to see that his handler’s face is devoid of pity, and instead a new softness is there– affection, pride, simple understanding. Clint relaxes despite himself, his body recognising like company. 

“Thank you,” Clint rasps. 

Coulson smiles, crow’s feet wrinkling by glittering eyes. “Anytime.”

Clint downs the rest of his drink in one go and waves the bartender over for another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and concrit appreciated as always!


	5. Chapter 5

**Three years ago, Manhattan, New York**

He settles into the visitor’s chair in Coulson’s office in the evening. “Sir,” he says. He opens his mouth, stops. It’s hard to spit it out.

Coulson waits patiently with his customary half-smile, the way he waits when Clint has an insight for a mission plan. 

Clint gathers himself again. “Come have dinner with me. I’m cooking.” 

Coulson blinks, looking stunned. “Um,” he mumbles. His eyes flash haphazardly over his desk as if searching for words. “I, mm. What time?” 

Clint laughs, Coulson’s speechlessness soothing his uncertainty. “In an hour. We can watch Dog Cops. Does that work for you?” 

Coulson nods, stupefied expression still reigning on his face. Clint shows himself out to start working on the ravioli. 

—

Coulson pulls up at the doorstep of Clint’s on-base apartment almost twenty minutes late, a sweating six-pack of beer in tow. “I’m sorry,” he huffs out as Clint lets him into his apartment on-base. “I didn’t know what to bring.”

Clint takes his jacket, the crook of the right arm water-damp, and guides him to the kitchen. He didn’t expect Coulson to stand on formality, but they’re not technically friends. “I don’t know anything beyond BudLite and Corona, so your guess is probably much better than mine.” He pulls out a bottle opener. “Crack one open for me? I’ll plate everything.”

“Sorry,” Coulson mumbles again. He pops the tops off of two bottles, then sets his hip on the counter to watch Clint. “Can I help with anything?”

Clint pauses, unsure of what to do with this version of Coulson. The domesticity of the setting seems to have totally unbalanced him, his handler’s normal wrecking-ball presence evaporating into tense shoulders and apologies. He shuffles over and joins Coulson at the counter, settling his body just an inch too close, and takes a draught of his beer. Coulson hurriedly matches with a large gulp, eyes anywhere but Clint. Clint wants to luxuriate in his body heat, but a warning bell rings in the back of his head. Coulson’s reaction to his proximity is different than Clint remembers. 

“Here,” Clint says, pressing his beer into Coulson’s free hand. He fixes his eyes on Coulson’s face, trying to see what the issue is. The feeling of their hands touching is surreal; Clint barely processes it consciously, but his breath threatens to shorten. “Bring this to the table for me, I’ll be right out.” He turns and ferries the plates out to his small dining room. 

Behind him, Coulson jerks to life, the uneasiness on his face replaced with confusion.

Leaving the space of kitchen seems to reset Coulson’s mood. Over ravioli, Clint wonders why he’s never invited his handler over. This dinner with Coulson has quickly become one of the most enjoyable evenings he’s had in New York by far. It’s not like nights out for the loose ends on base, where Coulson holds his tongue in mixed company. Here, in Clint’s apartment, where it’s just them, there’s nothing staying Coulson from exploring all of the sordid details of classified missions with the endearing enthusiasm of the almost-drunk. Clint forgets all about Dog Cops.

“Stay for a bit,” he says, after Coulson wraps up his tirade against SHIELD’s training division. “I never spend time with you outside of work. Finish the beer with me.” There are just the two bottles left in the cardboard carrier.

Coulson agrees happily enough. They take the empty dishes to the kitchen sink, where Coulson insists on helping Clint clean. The slip of his wet hands against Clint’s as they wash and rinse the dishes is thrilling. 

When they relax on Clint’s couch, salt and vinegar chips taking up residence on the coffee table, Clint sits– again– too close, their knees barely an inch apart on the seat, and Coulson moves his free hand slowly to Clint’s thigh. For all that he expects the heat of his palm, Clint is unprepared, stiffening at the touch. 

Coulson leans back, retracting his hand with an expression of dismay. 

“Look,” Coulson says, now clearly regretting having agreed to stay. “You don’t have anything to prove to me.”

“No,” blurts Clint. “I’m not…” He’s done this all wrong. “Just…” He reaches out and grasps Coulson’s hand to tug him closer, his grip clammy and tight with apprehension. 

The relief on Coulson’s face is comical. Clint thinks of Belarus. He has no right to ask this of Coulson, but the promise of nonviolent touch from the corded power of Coulson’s body is a siren’s song that he has no power against. Coulson is comfortable, solid, safe; it’s the closest to any man Clint can get at this point. In any other light Clint would be taking advantage of Coulson’s kind selflessness, his particular vulnerability. His trust in Clint, now personal as well as professional, continues to astonish.

Coulson shifts until his chest is a firm stripe of fire cloven to Clint’s thick shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I misunderstood.” He sets his bottle on the table and slips his arm behind Clint’s back, thumbing at the knobs of Clint’s spine reassuringly. The embrace is comforting beyond rational explanation.

“I’d like more, if you’re willing,” Clint mutters, “but maybe later.” He splays his palm against the muscle over Coulson’s beating heart.

Above him, Coulson looks surprised. “I was sure that, I thought–” _Aren’t you straight?_ is the question Clint sees in his eyes. “Aren’t you and Natasha together?”

Clint laughs softly into Coulson’s neck, trying to keep himself from floating off to the warm, masculine scent radiating from the body beside him. The steady thudding of Coulson’s heart drowns out the quiet litany of _threatthreatthreat_ itching under his skin. “We tried,” he explains. “A long time ago. Wasn’t enough.” And then he lets himself sink deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

In the scorching darkness Clint feels the tense weight on his shoulders shed into tinkling pieces, and as swiftly as fletching whipping its way past a bow-grip, he loses his grip on time. The steady, deep bass of an unchanging rhythm in the background is his only tether. 

“Clint,” Coulson murmurs from a distance, voice broken. The sensation of his hand carding mechanically through Clint’s hair is muted, as if through several layers of cotton. “Clint, are you with me?”

Clint pushes his head up hazily on impulse, eyelids dragging like lead weights and lips moving on Coulson’s shuddering neck. “Sir,” he mumbles. “Touch me?”

He hears Coulson’s breath hitch beside him, muffled and dreamlike. The heartbeat under his ear speeds up. The hand in his hair slides hesitantly down the back of his neck, past the collar of his t-shirt, and the conflagration under his skin begins to pull him back to reality. 

He groans, the crown of his head rubbing the underside of Coulson’s jaw, and shifts to sit in Coulson’s lap, his back pressed against Coulson’s chest. Coulson’s hand moves to Clint’s front, rucking up Clint’s shirt to his nipples to run fingers over fine-haired skin dotted with scars.

“Clint,” he hears from somewhere near. Coulson’s voice is breathless with worship. “Clint.” 

Clint pushes Coulson’s trembling fingers down past his fly with his own unsteady hands, yearning for the grounding touch of callused skin on his cock. Behind him Coulson’s chest vibrates as he groans, his breath short and desperate on Clint’s ear. Strong fingers wrap around the base of Clint’s shaft and Clint’s hips jerk, begging for pressure and friction. 

One of Clint’s hands rises to grip Coulson’s hair, holding his head in place for Clint to turn and kiss him. “Clint, Clint, Clint,” Coulson whimpers into his mouth, as if it’s the only word he knows. Clint slips his other hand beneath himself to knead at Coulson’s own erection, and after minutes of panting and awkward twisting they both spend themselves into their underwear. 

Clint relaxes into the aftershocks of his orgasm, legs tingling, and his head is clearer than it’s been in months. He brushes his nose behind Coulson’s ear, breathing in the smell of sweat and freesia aftershave. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, and touches his lips to Coulson’s jaw.

Coulson’s smile is shaky, weak. Fragmented. “Anytime,” he croaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost there folks!!! i drafted the beginning and end before i wrote the middle so the rest should be out soon


	6. Chapter 6

**One year ago, Manhattan, New York**

They check in at the base in New York, dirt-streaked and tired, to get processed. It’s past midnight and the medical bays are dead; a rare night, with no crises. Natasha grunts and leaves for her rooms without delay, leaving Clint and Coulson in the filing office to meander back on their own. 

Coulson takes him home. He fucks Clint through the mattress, slowly, his hips stuttering on every stroke with the effort to control himself. His hand never leaves Clint’s face, stroking his cheeks and carding through his hair, thumbing his ear, slipping in his mouth, wiping away the tears that gather at the corner of his eyes, like he’ll forget what Clint feels like if he lets go. Clint flexes his hands in Coulson’s hair and around his throat and Coulson climaxes inside of him, mouth open in a silent groan. Clint stares dazedly at the rictus of his face, going cross-eyed as Coulson’s elbows dip his torso minutely in the weakness of the little death. He feels like he’s a million miles away and yet separate only by milimeters from the sweat on Coulson’s heavy brow and the dusky flat blue of Coulson’s irises, flashing drowsily in the ambient light. When Coulson recovers, he pushes his softening cock back in, again and again, until the velvet friction on Clint’s rim makes him spurt into Coulson’s palm between them. 

“Phil,” he gasps, and Coulson’s eyes are soft with grateful devotion. 

It feels good to be loved. He can read it in Coulson’s every touch, each kiss he presses into Clint’s wet skin as he pulls the covers over them. Clint is reminded of the hug that froze his touch-starved body years ago in the omnipresence of Coulson’s meandering lips, the shattered groan in his living room that betrayed Coulson’s desperate hope.

His body twinges with vicious premonitions. Clint shuts down the somatic recital of _threatthreatthreat_ with Coulson’s heartbeat, before it starts to buzz. 

Here, in Coulson’s bedroom, with the lights dim and the fan turning lazily above them in the heavy summer air, the danger is hypothetical. Coulson’s love cannot hurt him. It is protective, adoring, chaste. It will certainly hurt Coulson, but it won’t hurt him. 

“I love you,” Coulson says aloud into Clint’s temples, for the first time. 

Clint smiles at him gently, shifting his head closer on the pillow. Coulson tries to look at him as long as he can keep himself awake, as if he’s never seen anything more beautiful, but his fatigue wins and his eyes droop closed. The proprietary hand on Clint’s waist, heavy and sticky, relaxes.

Clint watches Coulson in his sleep, the sweat in the dips and curves of his muscles drying in moving air. The compulsion to go, to dress and leave, is staggering. Not for the first time, he questions the wisdom of his actions. 

Coulson wants him to stay. He wants to wake up in the morning with Clint next to him, limbs sprawled out and dappled in the morning light, and eat breakfast with him. He wants a kiss before they step over the threshold to head to work. He wants another chance to say “I love you”, that whisper that children so love to repeat behind closed doors. He wants to search Clint’s eyes as he says it, to find his own affections returned– maybe, even, to hear it back from Clint’s lips in a warm baritone. 

The spectre of Natasha in his conscience looks sad. “Living beyond survival is a brutal exercise, _ptichka_ ,” it says. “It demands much of us.”

Clint stays awake for hours in indecision. In the end, his exhausted body chooses for him. Clint sleeps and does not dream.


	7. Chapter 7

**Now**

He’s seen it in Coulson’s eyes. The longer he stays with Phil, the longer Clint suns himself in his affection, the further the shadow stretches. The borders between the civilian and the professional blur only on the topic of Clint. 

Soon, Coulson will give in. He can’t help it; he is only a man. The temptation is so great. All of the power is in his hands, to pull the strings as he sees fit. Only the spectre of duty keeps him on the straight and narrow out in the field, and even that weakens by the hour. 

It’s the hardest thing Clint will ever do in his life, when it comes to pass. He knows. He wants to take everything that Phil gives him and keep it, to hoard the weathered care he sees in every crinkled crows-foot. He wants to be selfish. They live such short and brutal lives, after all, in the service of something greater; what’s one comfort among the horrors? 

“Duty bows to no comfort,” his conscience intones. “Redemption recognises no exceptions.” Clint knows that it speaks the truth. He whispers it to himself in the corridors, and Natasha only frowns the first time she hears it. She, too, recognises its irrefutable veracity. 

Statistically, this day should have happened at some point years before, and then many times again, but at the whim of cosmic dice it happens only now. 

Duty asks Coulson to give up Clint, and Coulson says no.

—

Clint is ashamed for watching Coulson, but only in that it presents the one flaw in his loyalty to Phil. In his capacity as an operative who holds the lives and fates of people he encounters across the globe, he is justified in his distrust. It doesn’t soften the dagger in his heart when Coulson smiles at his ubiquitous presence, at his increasing offers to help with Coulson’s paperwork, at his new propensity to sleep on Coulson’s office couch at odd hours. He cross-references Coulson’s briefing files to operation orders from above for every mission when the man steps out for meetings, praying that Coulson’s integrity as a leader continues to outweigh Phil’s selfish anguish. 

But prayers have only stalled the inevitable. One day, in a delayed perusal of documents downloaded from Coulson’s terminal, strapped into a helicopter hundreds of miles into the farmlands of Middle America, Clint reads the transcripts– sees what needs to be done– and realises that Coulson has shirked his responsibility. 

Clint passes through three dreamlike days of preparation in a daze, watching– always watching– and he sees Phil watching him back, across diner counters and the hotel room floor. His eyes, though, are greedy. Clint goes undercover for four months, insinuating himself into a trafficking ring based out of Vicksburg, and checks in with Phil in a hotel room roughly once a month. Every time, they have sex. The strain of imposed separation in the context of such danger is not kind to them. Phil is frantic, hands and mouth searching, careful never to leave marks but fuelled by a unique desperation. Like an animal, he senses something rising in the air. 

Clint is certain Phil knows about the steps he’s taken, in addition to those outlined in the briefing, in order to achieve the original objective passed down from the brass. It’s clear, however, that he’s waved them off as the adjustments of circumstance. It makes Phil’s muted distress even more devastating. When did he become so blind to matters when they concerned Clint? How did Clint miss the point of no return? 

The last time Clint checks in with Phil, he takes Phil apart, piece by piece, until Phil is loose and pliant under Clint’s calloused hands. “Kiss me,” he whispers, and Phil can only obey, his eyes glazed in docile pleasure. Clint takes him slowly, pressing their bodies together until his weight pushes Phil’s torso deep into the cheap mattress. The slide of their sweat-slick skin over Phil’s cock draws out from him thin sounds of need, and all of a sudden, as if Phil understands this is Clint’s goodbye, Phil bucks underneath him with a frenzy that almost unseats Clint from the bed. Their coupling turns rough and Clint bites anywhere under the collar-line he can get his teeth, knowing that Phil can afford it, while Phil leaves one, long, four-fingered scratch over his left shoulder as he comes. 

Clint continues to fuck Phil leisurely afterwards, enjoying the clinging softness of his anal passage after orgasm. Phil watches him drunkenly with his knees pressed by his ears, hands smoothing over Clint’s broad chest and shoulders again and again, playing with his nipples, until Clint climaxes inside of him. Clint will miss the little rhythmic moans that Phil makes when he’s being screwed senseless, the comfort of familiar intimacy. He’ll miss all of this, with the thirst of a dying man.

“Clint,” Phil murmurs from beneath him. “Clint, stay with me tonight.”

Clint wipes them both clean with tissues from the nightstand. “Alright,” he agrees. 

Phil rolls over to embrace Clint under the sheets with a sigh. “We might pull you out early. It’s getting too dangerous for you to stick around.” Phil’s voice is mild but his eyes betray him. _Trust me_ , they plead. “They’ve got some sort of purge set up in the second week, and whatever intel you’ll get then isn’t within the mission parameters. There’s no need to keep you in there for another full month.” 

Clint’s heart aches. In any other circumstance, he would be grateful for the reprieve.

He wonders if Phil recognises how far he’s fallen. How could he think that Clint would ignore the needs of the many? If he goes back, he might well be dead before the second week is out; but it’s the only way. There are lives at stake beyond his own, more innocent and worthy of salvation than that of a mercenary drowning in sin.

“Let me sleep on it,” Clint says instead. “The stakes are high.” 

Phil’s lips quirk tiredly, hope and worry beaming from his face. “Ok,” he murmurs, snuggling into Clint’s side. “I love you.” 

Clint waits for his breathing to even out before tying him securely to the bed frame. 

—

Phil wakes in the morning, jolting from drowsiness to high alert when he realises his limbs have been restrained. Clint perches by him on the bed, calming Phil’s response with a squeeze of his shoulder. “Clint?” His eyes are wild and searching, barely hidden fear boiling under the surface. 

“I’m staying until the end,” he says. “You’ve manipulated the missions parameters to suit your own agenda. Didn’t you think I’d notice?”

Phil, Clint notices, doesn’t attempt to deny it. “Clint, let me go. You don’t understand. Trust me, please!” The misery in Phil’s voice is heartrending, iridescent with fear, and completely unprofessional. 

“No,” Clint says in admonition. “For your sake, and for mine, be ready to extract me according to the original operations order.” 

Phil makes a sound of humiliated fury, kicking at Clint’s knots with renewed vigour. There is nothing he can say, and he knows it. 

Clint makes the sign of the cross to a god he doesn’t believe in. “Duty bows to no comfort,” he says to Phil’s horrified face. “Redemption recognises no exceptions.” He touches Phil’s lips with his fingers to end the prayer. “It’ll be ok, Phil.” 

The blanched velvet skin under his fingertips trembles. Clint stands and turns away, ashamed of the cruelty of what he says next. “I love you.” 

Phil lets out a strangled sob.

It’s the first time Phil has heard those words from Clint’s lips, and it may very well be the last. Clint leaves so he won’t have to see the bitterness on Coulson’s face. 

Clint has yet to overcome the lessons of his childhood, but they have never failed him when it counts. His body burns again. _threatthreatthreatthreat_. 

He doesn’t trust Coulson to do what needs to be done.

 

—

 

When it’s over–

When Clint’s lying in the medical bay, wires and sensors swarming over his skin until he looks more machine than man–

When Clint cracks open his crusted eyelids and sees a blurry figure hunched pathetically in his bedside chair, a presence he’d know anywhere–

Cornflower blue eyes latch on to his, a startled breath seeping through gritted teeth. Those eyes sing of betrayal, of broken peace.

Coulson is only here because it’s their ritual. They watch each other’s backs. Now that Clint is awake, alive– the machines beep faster as his heart rate rises– the debt is paid. It’s as much of an admission of guilt as Clint will ever get. That Clint made the right choice. 

Coulson stands and leaves the room without a word. The sound of the door clicking shut heralds the end of an era. 

Clint wants to scream, but his body is silent. He’s safe. 

 

—

**Epilogue**

Years later, after the Battle of New York, Steve Rogers pulls Natasha Romanov aside and asks about Clint and Phil. 

“They were the best two-man wetworks team SHIELD has ever seen,” she says, in her own form of compliment. My brothers, she doesn’t say. 

“That’s not what I meant.” Steve frowns. “They didn’t seem particularly close, but Clint… he’s a wreck. His behaviour is scaring me. There’s something I’m missing.”

“Oh,” Natasha says quietly. “Yes.” She hesitates, then speaks again. “They were in love. They were in love for a long time, but you know. Our line of work doesn’t encourage lengthy relationships.”

Steve thinks of James, Peggy. He understands.

“One day, home followed them to work, and work followed them home.” Natasha smiles at Steve sadly. “We have a saying, in Russia– ’Trust, but verify’. The only sort of trust that survives in espionage. Clint and Phil forgot long enough to fall in love, and then–“ she shrugs– “one day, Clint remembered.” 

Steve squints at the deliberate imprecision. 

“Clint saved Phil’s career and reputation, at great cost to their relationship.” Natasha clarifies, blandly. “By then it was easier to try to forget each other.”

“But Clint still loves him.” 

“Of course. Haven’t you ever been in love?” Her tone is just short of facetious. Steve realises belatedly that Natasha is parroting a sentiment she has never experienced. 

“Clint always expected to die first. In some ways he was very cruel, to expect Phil to be safe for him while he courted death, and to survive him without complaint. But Phil was a fool for thinking he could avoid the consequences entirely.” She sighs. “I suppose given present circumstances Clint might regret his choices.” 

The implications frighten Steve. “Easier now to try to forget, I think.” 

Natasha stills, eyes wary. “Perhaps.” Her gaze leaves him, her blank face obscuring her churning thoughts. Steve senses a choice in the making. 

Finally, she looks up again. 

“If Clint thinks so as well, Director Fury may have the resources for such a procedure, available following psychiatric evaluation.” Her face hardens into the battlefield mask that Steve has become intimately familiar with. “I care for him as a sister does her brother, Captain. I will watch how you handle this very carefully.” 

Steve feels the compulsion to ease suffering rise in his lungs like a tidal wave. The path is clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyyy it's done! Thank you for reading, it's been fun stretching the writing muscles, see you again next year. I started this on a whim because i kept thinking about dogmatics and absolutism and thought i would finish in a day but another more long-term project I’ve been working on kept distracting me. Concrit/comments always welcome. I didn't know whether to tag major character death or not, let's assume Coulson's alive but Clint chooses to wipe his memory in his ignorance and there is more heartache


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